Emergency vehicle avoidance control apparatus and emergency vehicle avoidance control method

Abstract

A vehicle control apparatus includes an emergency vehicle position acquiring section that acquires position information of an emergency vehicle; a road structure acquiring section that acquires a structure of a user's own vehicle travel road on which a vehicle is traveling; and an avoidance control section that performs avoidance control causing the vehicle to get out of the way, if the position information of the emergency vehicle has been acquired. In a case where the emergency vehicle is an oncoming vehicle and the road has a median strip, the avoidance control section suppresses the avoidance control when there is no opening in the median strip between the vehicle and the emergency vehicle.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . An emergency vehicle avoidance control apparatus comprising one or more processors, wherein the one or more processors:
 acquire position information of an emergency vehicle;   acquire a structure of a user's own vehicle travel road on which a user's own vehicle is traveling;   perform avoidance control causing the user's own vehicle to get out of a way, if the position information of the emergency vehicle has been acquired; and   in a case where the structure of the user's own vehicle travel road includes a median strip and a position of the emergency vehicle is on an opposite side of the user's own vehicle in a manner to sandwich the median strip, suppress the avoidance control when there is no opening in the median strip between the user's own vehicle and the emergency vehicle.   
     
     
         2 . The emergency vehicle avoidance control apparatus according to  claim 1 , wherein the one or more processors:
 in a case where the structure of the user's own vehicle travel road includes the median strip and the position of the emergency vehicle is on the opposite side of the user's own vehicle in a manner to sandwich the median strip, when there is an opening in the median strip between the user's own vehicle and the emergency vehicle, perform the avoidance control causing the user's own vehicle to temporarily stop before reaching the opening.   
     
     
         3 . The emergency vehicle avoidance control apparatus according to  claim 1 , wherein the one or more processors:
 suppress the avoidance control when a distance between the user's own vehicle and the emergency vehicle is greater than or equal to a prescribed distance.   
     
     
         4 . An emergency vehicle avoidance control method comprising:
 acquiring position information of an emergency vehicle;   acquiring a structure of a user's own vehicle travel road on which a user's own vehicle is traveling;   performing avoidance control causing the user's own vehicle to get out of a way, if the position information of the emergency vehicle has been acquired; and   in a case where the structure of the user's own vehicle travel road includes a median strip and a position of the emergency vehicle is on an opposite side of the user's own vehicle in a manner to sandwich the median strip, suppressing the avoidance control when there is no opening in the median strip between the user's own vehicle and the emergency vehicle.